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might do! Have you rested long enough? | continues to inform us, that, after this opCome along then to Goody Blake's. eration, they were-what think you?

"Old Goody Blake was old and poor"

What is the consequence?

"Ill-fed she was, and thinly clad, And any man who passed her door Might see"

What might he see?

"How poor a hut she had." Southey-Ease and simplicity are two expressions often confounded and misapplied. We usually find ease arising from long practice, and sometimes from a delicate ear without it; but simplicity may be rustic and awkward; of which, it must be acknowledged, there are innumerable examples in these volumes. But surely it would be a pleasanter occupation to recollect the many that are natural, and to search out the few that are graceful.

Porson. We have not yet taken our leave of Goody Blake.

"All day she spun in her poor dwelling,

And then 'twas three hours' work at night;
Alas! 'twas hardly worth the telling."

I am quite of that opinion.

"But when the ice our streams did fetter"Which was the fetterer? We may guessbut not from the grammar.

"Oh! then how her old bones would shake!

You would have said, if you had met her"—

Now what would you have said? "Goody! come into my house, and warm yourself with a pint of ale at the kitchen fire." No such naughty thing.

"You would have said, if you had met her, 'Twas a hard time for Goody Blake !"

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Southey. If you said only that, you must have been the colder of the two, and God had done less for you than for her.

Porson. "Sad case it was, as you may think,
As every man who knew her says.'

Now, mind ye! all this balderdash is from "Poems purely of the Imagination." Such is what is notified to us in the title-page.In spite of a cold below zero, I hope you are awake, Mr. Southey! How do you find nose and ears? all safe and sound? are the acoustics in tolerable order for harmony? Listen then.

"The west that burns like one dilated sun”—

Are you ready for the sublime? Come on. "Where in a mighty crucible expire The mountains."

Glowing hot."

Southey-Rather retrograde thermome

ter!

Porson. And what do you think the mountains were like, when they were in the crucible after their expiration? Why they were like "coals of fire."

Southey.-Coals of fire are generally on the outside of crucibles. The melting of the mountains is taken from the Holy Scriptures.

Porson. And never was there such a piece of sacrilege. Away he runs with them, and passes them (as thieves usually do) into the crucible. [Here follows "an anecdote for fathers, showing how the practice of lying may be taught."] Such is the title, a somewhat prolix one: but for the soul of me I cannot find out the lie, with all my experience in those matters.

"Now tell me had you rather be ?" Cannot our writers perceive that had be is not English? Would you rather be is grammatica. I'd sounds much the same when it signifies I would. The latter with slighter contraction is l'ou'd; hence the corruption goes further.

Southey. This is just and true; but we must not rest too often, too long, or too pressingly, on verbal criticism.

Porson.-Do you, so accurate a grammarian, say this? To pass over such vulgarisms, which indeed the worst writers seldom fall into-if the words are silly, idle, or inapplicable, what becomes of the sentence? Those alone are to be classed as verbal critics who can catch and comprehend no more than a word here and there, and who lay more stress upon it, if faulty, than upon all the beauties in the best authors. But unless we, who sit perched and watchful on a higher branch. than the word-catchers, and who live on somewhat more substantial than syllables, do catch the word, that which is dependent on the word must escape us also. Now do me the favor to read the rest; for I have only just breath enough to converse, and your voice will give advantage to the poetwhich mine cannot.

ry

Southey (reads).—

"In careless mood he looked at me,
While still I held him by the arm,
And said At Kilve I'd rather be
Than here at Liznin farm.'

Now, little Edward, say why so

My little Edward, tell me why."

"Like word-catchers that live on syllables."

It must now be all over with them if they expired. The self-same verse, however, POPE.

Porson. Where is the difference of obvious truth, what has he taught the fathmeaning betwixt

"Little Edward, say why so,"

and

"Little Edward, tell me why?" Southey (reads).—

"I cannot tell-I do not know."

Porson.-Again, where is the difference between "I cannot tell," and "I do not know?"

Southey (reads). —

Why this is strange, said"

Porson. And I join in the opinion, if he intends it for poetry.

Southey (reads).—

er? "The hundredth part" of the lore communicated by the child to the parent may content him: but whoever is content. ed with a hundred-fold more than all they both together have given us, cannot be very ambitious of becoming a senior wrangler. These, in good truth, are verses

"Pleni ruris et inficetiarum."

"Dank, limber verses, stuft with lakeside sedges, And propt with rotten stakes from broken hedges." In the beginning of these I forbore to remark

"On Kilve by the green sea." When I was in Somersetshire, Neptune had not parted with his cream-colored horses, and there was no green sea within the ho

"For here are woods, hills smooth and warm; There surely must some reason be. Porson. This is ainong the least awk-rizon. The ancients used to give the sea ward of his inversions, which are more fre- the color they saw in it; Homer dark-blue, quent in him, and more awkward, than in as in the Hellespont, the Ionian, and any of his contemporaries. Somewhat less gaan; Virgil blue-green, as along the

so would be

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coast of Naples and Sorento. I suspect, from his character, he never went a league off land. He kept usually, both in person and poetry, to the "vada cærula.”

Southey. But he hoisted purple sails, and the mother of his Eneas was at the helm.

Porson. How different from Mr. Wordsworth's wash-tub, pushed on the sluggish lake by a dumb idiot! We must leave the to "the small Celandine." I will now relieve sea-shore for the ditch-side, and get down you give me the book.

"Pleasures newly found are sweet"What a discovery! I never heard of any pleasures that are not.

"When they lie about our feet."

Does that make them the sweeter?

"

'February last."

How poetical!

"February last, my heart

First at sight of thee was glad;
All unheard-of as thou art,

Thou must needs, I think, have had,
Celandine! and long ago,

Praise of which I nothing know."

What an inversion! A club-foot is not
enough, but the heel is where the toe should
be.

"I have not a doubt but he
Whosoe'er the man might be,
Who the first with pointed rays
(Workman worthy to be sainted)
Set the signboard in a blaze," &c.

Porson. What is flat ought to be plain; Really, is there any girl of fourteen whose but who can expound to me the thing here poetry, being like this, the fondest mother signified? who can tell me where is the lie,would lay before her most intimate friends? and which is the liar? If the lad told a lie, If a taste for what the French call niaiserie why praise him so? and if he spoke the were prevalent, he who should turn his rid

Strange fils of passion have I known,

And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell."

icule so effectively against it as to put it glutinated nodules under a thatched roof, entirely out of fashion, would perform a far the more picturesque and the more interestgreater service than that glorious wit Cer-ing (no doubt) for its procumbent elevation. vantes, who shattered the last helmet of knight-errantry. For in knight-errantry there was the stout, there was the strenuous, there was sound homeliness under courtly guise, and the ornamental was no impediment to the manly. But in niaiserie thereare ordinarily the debilitating fumes of self-conceit, and nothing is there about it but what is abject and ignoble. Shall we go on?

Southey.-As you heard me patiently when we met before, it is but fair and reasonable that I should attend to you, now you have examined more carefully what I have recommended to your perusal.

Porson. After a long preamble, your recorder saith,

“'Tis known that twenty years are past since she"Nobody has been mentioned yet, but you

soon hear who she is.

(Her name is Martha Ray) Gave with a maiden's true good-will Her company to Stephen Hill,

And she was blythe and gay:
While friends and kindred all approved,
Of him whom tenderly she loved;

And they had fixed the wedding-day."
Now, fifty pounds' reward to whosoever
shall discover, in any volume of poems, an-
cient or modern, eight consecutive verses
so sedulously purified from all saline parti-

cles.

Southey.-I would not be the claimant. Porson. And pray, Mr. Southey, can you imagine what day of the week that wedding-day was?

Southey.-I wonder he neglected to specify it. In general he is quite satisfactory on all such dates.

Porson. Neither can I ascertain the exact day of the week, entirely through his unusual inadvertence. But the weddingday, sure enough began with

"The morning that must wed them both." Odd enough that a wedding should unite two persons! I believe, on recollection, that in the country parts of England such a result of such a ceremony is by no means uncommon. Here in London it is apt to embrace, in due course of time, another or

more.

Southey. A great deal of bad poetry does not of necessity make a bad poet; but a little of what is excellent, on a befitting subject, constitutes a good one.

Porson. If ever this poet before us should write a large poem, (a great poem is out of the question,) he will stick small particles of friable earth together, and hang the con

He has never told lover, or other man, any thing like a fit of passion: I wish he could do that.

"In one of those sweet dreams I slept,

Kind nature's gentlest boon"

What originality of thought, and what distinctness of expression!

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My horse moved on: hoof after hoof
He raised".

What a horse! did ever another do the
like?

"and never stopped."

A wandering Jew of horse-flesh! There's a horse for you! Could any Yorkshire jockey promise more?

"What fond and wayward thoughts will slide Into a lover's head!"

Really! are you aware of that, Mr. Southey? But, if they must slide anywhere, they can nowhere find a piece of harder ice to slide upon.

Southey.-Certainly there is not much warmth or much invention in several of the Lyrical Ballads. This species of poetry can do without them.

Porson. Then we can do without this species of poetry. But invention here is: you never have looked deep enough for it : invention here is, I say again; and a sufficiency for a royal patent. What other man living has produced such a quantity of soup out of bare bones, however unsatisfactory may be the savor?

"O mercy! to myself, I cried"

We sometimes say to ourselves, but seldom
cry to ourselves in moments of reflection.
"If Lucy should be, dead!"

Southey.

Surely this is very natural. Porson. Do not force me to quote Voltaire on the natural, and to show you what he calls it. If the presentiment had been followed up by the event, the poem, however tedious and verbose, had been less bald. In how different a manner has Madame de Staël treated this very thought, which many others have also entertained! Do me the favor to take down Corinne. Excuse my pronunciation. tournais mes regards vers le ciel pour l'en remercier, je ne sçais par quel hazard une superstition de mon enfance s'est ranimée dans mon cœur. La lune que je contemplais

"Comme je

s'est couverte d'un nuage, et l'aspect de ce nu: age était funeste."

At the close of the last volume (give it me) we find the consequence. "Elle voulut lui parler, et n'en eût pas la force. Elle leva ses regards vers le ciel, et vit la lune qui se couvrait du même nuage qu'elle avait fait remarquer à Lord Melvil, quand ils s'arretèrent sur le bord de la mer en allant à Naples. Alors elle le lui montra de sa main mourante, et son dernier soupir fit retomber cette main." Here you have the poetical, you had before the prose version of the same description.

Southey. It is difficult to treat those subjects much better in the ballad.

Porson. Why then choose them? I will however prove to you that it is no such a difficult matter to treat them much better, and with a very small stock of poetry.

Southey. I am anxious to see the experiment, especially if you yourself make it.

Porson. I have written the characters so minute, according to my custom, that I cannot make them out distinctly in the inclosure of these green curtains. Take up your paper from under the castor-oil bottle; yes, that-now read.

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6.

"Both stockings gartered, she drew down Her petticoat, and then her gown,

And next she clapped her hat on. A sudden dread came o'er her mind, 'Good gracious! now, if I should find

No string to tie my palten!"

Porson.-Come, come, do not throw the paper down so disdainfully! I am waiting to hear you exclaim," Sume superbiam quæsitam meritis." Ah! you poets are like the curs of Constantinople. They all have their own quarters, and drive away or worry to death every intruder. The mangier they are the fiercer are they. Never did I believe until now that any poet was too great for your praise. Well, what do you think-for we of the brotherhood are impatient to hear all about it? Jealous crcature!

Southey.-Really I find no cause for tri

umph.

Porson. Nor do I; but my merriment is excited now, and was excited on a former occasion, by the fervor of your expression, that," Pindar would not have braced a poem to more vigor, nor Euripides* have breathed into it more tenderness and passion."

Southey. I spoke of the Laodamia.

Porson. Although I gave way to pleasantry instead of arguing the point with you, I had a great deal more to say, Mr. Southey, than I said at the first starting of so heavy a runner in his race with Pindar. We will again walk over a part of the ground.

"With sacrifice before the rising morn

Performed, my slaughtered lord have I' required, And in thick darkness, amid shades forlorn, Him of the infernal gods have 1'desired.'"

I only remembered, at the time, that the second and fourth verses terminate too much alike. Desired may just as well be where required is, and required where desired is both are wretchedly weak, and both are preceded by the same words, "have I."

Southey. He has corrected them at your suggestion-not indeed much (if any thing) for the better; and he has altered the conclusion, making it more accordant with morality and Christianity, but somewhat less perhaps with Greek manners and sentiments, as they existed in the time of the Trojan war.

Porson. Truly it was far enough from

Imag. Conversations, v. 1. These words are printed as Porson's--improperly, as the whole context shows.

these before. Acknowledge that the fourth line is quite unnecessary, and that the word "performed," in the second, is prosaic.

Southey.-I would defend the whole

poem.

Porson. Where will you find, in all his criticisms, one striking truth, one vigorous thought, one vivid witticism, or even one felicitous expression? Yet his noxious gas is convertible to more uses than Hallam's caput

Porson. To defend the whole, in criti-mortuum that lies under it. cism as in warfare, you must look with Southey.-Better is it that my fellowpeculiar care to the weakest part. In our townsman should " plod his weary way" in last conversation, you expressed a wish that the Heart of Mid-Lothian, than interline I should examine the verses "analytically with a sputtering pen the fine writing of and severely." Had I done it severely, you Sismondi. would have caught me by the wrist and have intercepted the stroke. Show me, if you can, a single instance of falsity or unfairness in any of these remarks. If you cannot, pray indulge me at least in as much hilarity as my position, between a sick bed and a sorry book, will allow me.

Southey. I must catch the wrist here. The book, as you yourself conceded, comprehends many beautiful things.

Porson. If these fellows knew any thing about antiquity, I would remind them that the Roman soldier, on his march, carried not only vinegar, but lard; and that the vinegar was made wholesome by temperate use and proportionate dilution.

Southey. I do not find that our critics are fond of suggesting any emendations of the passages they censure in their contemporaries, as you have done in the ancients. Will not you tell me, for the benefit of the author, if there is any thing in the Lyrical Ballads which you could materially improve?

Porson.-Tell me first if you can turn a straw into a walking-stick. When you have done this, I will try what I can do. But I never can do that for Mr. Wordsworth which I have sometimes done for his betters. His verses are as he wrote them; and we must leave them as they are: theirs are not so: and faults committed by transcribers or printers may be corrected. In Macbeth, for example, we read,

Porson. I have said it; I have repeated it; and I will maintain it: but there are more mawkish. This very room has many things of value in it: yet the empty vials are worth nothing, and several of the others are uninviting. Beside yourself, I know scarcely a critic in England sufficiently versed and sufficiently candid to give a correct decision on our poets. All others have their parties; most have their personal friends. On the side opposite to these, you find no few morose and darkling, who conjure up the phantom of an enemy in every rising reputation. You are too wise and too virtuous to resemble them. On this cool green bank of literature you That croaks the fatal enterance of Duncan," etc. stand alone. I always have observed that Is there any thing marvellous in a raven the herbage is softest and finest in elevated being hoarse? which is implied by the word places; and that we may repose with most "himself:" that is to say, even the raven, safety and pleasantness on lofty minds. etc. Shakspeare wrote one letter more; The little folks who congregate beneath"The raven himself is hoarser." you, seem to think of themselves as Pope thought of the women :

"The critic who deliberates is lost."

Southey. Hence random assertions, beats, animosities, missiles of small wit, clouds hiding every object under them, forked lightnings of ill-directed censure, and thunders of applause lost in the vacuity of space. What do you think now of this? "An ethereal purity of sentiment which could only emanate from the soul of a woman."*

Porson. Such a criticism is indeed pure oil from the Minerva Press.

Southey.-No indeed; it is train-oil, imported neat from Jeffrey's.

Edinburgh Review on the Poems of Felicia

Hemans.

VOL. I. No. II. 22

"The raven himself is hoarse,

Southey. Surely you could as easily correct in the Lyrical Ballads faults as obvious. Porson.-If they were as well worth my attention.

Southey. Many are deeply interested by the simple tales they convey in such plain easy language.

There

Porson. His language is often harsh and dissonant, and his gait is like one whose waistband has been cut behind. may be something" interesting" in the countenance of the sickly, and even of the dead, but it is only life that can give us enjoy. ment. Many beside lexicographers place in the same line simplicity and silliness: they cannot separate them as we can. They think us monsters because we do not see

what they see, and because we see plainly what they never can see at all.

There is

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